His examples don't support his conclusion. They are all easy to describe with an elevator pitch.<p>Facebook - It is a social network for college students<p>iPhone - it is an ipod with a web browser and telephone built in<p>FriendFeed - we extended the Facebook news feed concept to all the places where people host content<p>wii - it is a nintendo with a cool new controller<p>data visualization apps - we made an app for visualizing data<p>His story about Facebook is also bad, because Zuckerburg did say "we made a social network for college students" and Peter Thiel did give him money.
"Every great idea doesn't" != "Not every great idea does"<p>And now that that's out of the way: so what? Is this a serious problem? If your idea is too great to encapsulate in an elevator pitch, why not wait a few months and turn the pitch into "I'm going to completely fix the X industry. Visit URL dot TLD to look at my prototype."?
Memo to self: MAKE IT FIT.<p>VCs don't give a crap. They should not. Neither should your banker, mother, potential business partner/co-founder, etc...<p>The onus is on you, the founder(s), to be articulate enough to make it fit.<p>The focus is on saying things the way the audience understands. That takes two things:<p>1) Understand your audience (three books could be written on this alone); and<p>2) Be articulate enough to express your idea in a way your audience will be receptive to it. This is heavily dependent on #1 above.<p>If the guy you're talking to says "tell me in 30 seconds what you are doing," then you better explain it well, and do so in 30 seconds. You could explain the most complex idea succinctly if you wanted to, and were articulate enough.<p>It's the same as writing: The introduction to your business plan, for example, is an elevator pitch. The first paragraph of a cover letter is also an elevator pitch. People will decide whether you are onto something or whether you are full of it.<p>This Hank Williams guy (the author of the post) might simply not be the articulate type. He says the idea "is bull." Does this satisfy the need? No, it merely invalidates it. Whatever he says, people will still expect an elevator pitch. People will still listen to your idea with a short attention span, simply because there is so much bullshit and trash out there.<p>Make your pitch longer and plant the seeds to your own demise, people.<p>So yes, my response to this "I feel like ignoring the audience" post is:<p>Memo to self: MAKE IT FIT.
"I don't think Mark Zuckerberg could have sat a VC down and said, this is my idea, (or this is the idea I stole from the Winkelvoss brothers or whatever) please invest in me."<p>Well, this is exactly what he did when he got money off Peter Thiel, isn't it?<p>If someone can't either explain your vision or at least mock up a tangible version of it that shows what they are trying to do, then how can they expect to create the product in reality. Sure, Facebook may not have made sense until it existed in some form, nor friendfeed, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have a good elevator pitch, the pitch is often showing off part of the product, not just an idea, which by itself is largely worthless. Most VCs don't fund just ideas, there has to be at least some basic implementation already.
I think where this argument breaks down is that VC's don't invest in elevator pitches. Elevator pitches give you a foot in the door. At some point you're going to have to have something more substantial.<p>I think where the elevator pitch is most useful an exercise in distilling the "one thing" your company doesn - and in the beginning it should be as much as possible a single thing. For Facebook it could have been "We make it easier for people to connect over the web". You take that and then move into more details. Use the Pitch to start a conversation at a networking event and then go from there.
The most successful VCs probably live on top of the biggest buildings, meaning they have a very long elevator ride.<p>Also, these days you could pull your iPhone out of your pocket and show a small demo on the spot.
...and the pitch is not the product or the feature, the pitch is the company. I don't know why I read the 'whydoeseverythingsuck.com' entries. You don't sell an investor on the iPhone, you sell them on what makes Apple, Apple. The iPhone follows the overall Apple mission and strategy. You don't sell Facebook.com as it looks, you sell it conceptually. Concept is not distinguishing enough, then you sell on the traction, traffic trends and demographics. You seek funding from _within_ a company like Apple, or Nintendo, to make the products that have to be experienced to understand; you seek external funding to empower the company to be able to fund them.<p>As the oft repeated question (is your idea a business or just a feature for another company) implies... your pitch should follow.